Leave a twig for the birds to perch on... don't let the capitalists do your thinking for you... if you are in northern Minnesota, stop on in; the coffee is always hot and the cookie jar is full... looking forward to the day when the real decisions in America are made by working class families gathered around the kitchen table... new postings daily...Yours in the struggle...Alan L. Maki

Let's talk...

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

I just received this e-mail you can read below. I don't know anything about the organization other than what you are able to read here; although I know a couple of the people involved.

I'm glad to see people working on this idea first advanced here in the United States by the great citizen-patriot-revolutionary Thomas Paine.

In the year 2000, political leaders from around the world signed on to a commitment to end poverty in fifteen years... here we are fifteen years later and poverty is getting worse instead of being alleviated and ended.

This is the richest country in the world and if we can't put an end to poverty with all of our resources and wealth what other country can?

At the present time, much of our Nation's wealth created by workers is being squandered on militarism and wars, subsidizing Wall Street's profits with our tax dollars and this Wall Street bribed government--- local, state and federal--- does nothing to put an end to poverty.

In my opinion, this Basic Income Guarantee is a very good reform provided it is legislatively tied to ALL actual cost-of-living factors.

While I definitely support the idea of lobbying for this important reform I don't think we should kid ourselves into believing this Wall Street owned and dominated government will provide such a reform anymore that they will put an end to all these dirty wars which are making us all poor.

This Basic Income Guarantee is going to have to become a big part of the platforms and programs of alternative political parties; and, in my opinion, what we really need is a new progressive working class based political party to bring forward this important reform--- a political party intent on challenging Wall Street for political and economic power.

I hope others will forward and circulate this e-mail everywhere. Post it on union and church bulletin boards. Bring this idea into the proverbial public square where it belongs. Create resolutions in support for your organizations, political party and unions to endorse. Get out and leaflet and table. Organize demonstrations and educational picket lines. Talk to people at work and at school.

We should be thinking of convening some kind of local, state, regional and national conferences involving hundreds, if not thousands, of people in active support of theBasic Income Guarantee--- BIG.

The Basic Income Guarantee is an effort we should all be able to plug into in one way or another to lend our support.

Cindy Sheehan did a good job bringing this issue forward in her campaign for California Governor on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket.

We also need aFull Employment Actmaking it mandatory for the president and Congress to attain and maintain full employment.

I have suggested the two be tied together as some kind of reform package like a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity."

The Basic Income Guarantee is in line with our Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights along with the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, too.

I am especially happy to hear there is cross-border collaboration with our neighbors to the north in Canada on this very important issue of a Basic Income Guarantee.

Spread the word because if you don't, the Wall Street owned and controlled media isn't going to spread the word for us, although this would be the perfect issue for writing a "Letter-to-the-Editor" of your local newspapers--- and don't forget the many newsletters, too. And FaceBook posts and blogs.

If we want to build a movement to win the Basic Income Guarantee we need to bring this issue into the public square in a massive way.

As editor, I'm sending this report is to all subscribers of the USBIG NewsFlash. A new political movement began organizing itself at the 14th NABIG Congress in New York on March, 1, 2015. The following report shows how interested people can get involve. Please send correspondence to the relevant committee contacts (below), or to Jason Burke Muprhy.

Thank you,Karl Widerquist, editor, USBIG NewsFlash

Report from the meeting to create a political movement for basic income

Thirty-one people signed the attendance sheet at the first meeting of group of people attempting to start a political movement for basic income in the United States. Several more people attended without signing, and others followed and contributed to the meeting online. The meeting took place from 6:30 to 9:30pm at the Commons Brooklyn on February 26, 2015, at the close of the Fourteenth North American Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG) Congress. The meeting began with all participants discussing their background and the history that brought them to the basic income movement. The group then split into several small groups, each discussing a different issue. Participants reassembled to bring their discussion to the whole group and to make some decisions.

The group chose not to name a leader or a leadership committee. It did not even pick a name for the new organization at this point. Instead, it created several committees and asked them to perform certain tasks. The group created the following committees:

1. One committee will be in charge of legally chartering two groups. The U.S. Basic Income Guarantee (USBIG) Network, which has existed since 1999 without an official legal charter, will become a U.S. nonprofit organization—a so-called 501(c)(3). This means that it will be able to accept tax-deductible donations, but it will not be able to do overtly political work. The second organization (yet to be named) will be chartered as a social welfare organization or a lobbying group with a 501(c)(4) tax designation. This means that it will be able to do overtly political work, but donations to it will not be tax-deductible. The following members have so far joined the committee to charter the two organizations:

2. A committee was created to organize the next meeting of the unnamed political group. The USBIG Network meets once a year at the NABIG Congress (which alternates each year between the U.S. and Canada), but the political group will meet more often. The committee hopes to organize the next meeting within 3 to 6 months. The committees within the unnamed political group will probably meet earlier via the internet. The following members volunteered to organize the next meeting of the unnamed group:

3. The content creation committee is in charge of research, news reporting, social media presence, and media relations.

CONTACT PERSON: Jason Burke Murphy

Contact for people interested in the NewsFlash and BI News: Karl Widerquist

Contact for people interested in improving the Basic Income articles on Wikipedia: Dorothy Howard

Scott Santens

4. The regional network committee will work on establishing local chapters of the group in cities and towns across the United States. The contact person for this committee is:

Kristine Osbakken

5. Liane Gaileand Ann Withornagreed to be the contact people for the for working groups on women & Basic Income, basic income & the new economy, and basic income as an anti-poverty policy.

The organizers of this new group without a name put out a nationwide call to anyone who wants to get involved. If people would like to join one of the existing committees or propose a new committee, please email the relevant committee contacts and volunteer. If you don’t know which committee to contact, the two groups have two general contact people:

The fact is, people don't trust scientists and their conclusions because so many scientists have sold themselves to big business.

Science is not being used for the people in this country.

Science has been used to bolster the corporate bottom line: profits.

Just look at science and the university.

Research has been corrupted by the corporate drive for profits.

It is relatively easy for big business to buy a "scientific" opinion to support anything that can make a profit--- from militarism to the kind of food we eat.

Scientists, for the most part, don't use their research to advance peace, anti-racism, the well-being of people and the environment. Science has been used to expand Wall Street's profits. This is why people don't trust scientists and their views, opinions and research.

Scientists do nothing to bring their ideas and research into the public square where people have a choice to think about any of this.

Scientists don't come into the public square to defend their ideas, opinions and research; they remain aloof of the people and then we get articles like this outlining the rift between "regular" people and scientists.

This rotten capitalist social and economic system corrupts science just like it corrupts politics, health care, sports, culture and everything else. And then we wonder why people doubt scientific reasoning?

We need a social and economic system, socialism, where science is for the good of people and the environment.When people understand science is on their side, not Wall Street's side, people will support science.

Most important is we need a scientific community squarely on the side of peace--- in opposition to militarization and these dirty imperialist wars.

Alan L. Maki

Poll:

Poll Reveals Rift Between Scientists, Regular Folks

When it comes to food, energy, and education, Americans don't follow experts' lead.

Recent
outbreaks of measles have been tied to children who haven't been
vaccinated. Many people still believe that childhood vaccinations are
dangerous, despite scientific evidence to the contrary.

Share

On most other scientific matters, a widespread "opinion gap" splits the experts from everyday folks, pollsters at the Pew Research Center reported Thursday.
The rift persists in long-running issues such as the causes of climate
change and the safety of nuclear power. And it crops up in the news
today in battles over outbreaks of measles tied to children who haven't
been vaccinated.

Scientists say this opinion gap points to
shortcomings in their own skills at reaching out to the public and to
deficits in science education. On the last point, at least, the public
agrees, with majorities on both sides rating U.S. education as average
at best.

That's bad news for the future, says American Association for the Advancement of Science head Alan Leshner, if Americans want to keep enjoying the benefits of science.

"There is a disconnect between the way the public
perceives science and the way that scientists see science," says
Leshner, whose Washington D.C.-based organization collaborated with Pew
on the polling. "Scientists need to do something to turn this around."

In an editorial in the journal Science,
Leshner called on scientists to personally stem a swelling
"unbridgeable chasm" in attitudes between researchers and the taxpayers
who largely fund essential research.

Mind the Gap

In a head-to-head comparison of expert and
everyday attitudes, the two new polls asked 2,002 U.S. adults and 3,748
AAAS members (described as "a broad-ranging group of professionally
engaged scientists") identical questions about their views on scientific
achievement, education, and controversial issues.

"People are still mostly positive about science,"
but compared with five years ago, "we are seeing a slight souring of the
views," says Pew polling expert Cary Funk. "When you look across the questions, you are struck by large differences in citizens and scientists."

On the safety of genetically modified food and
pesticides, for example, experts and the public differed by 40
percentage points or more in their approval, with the majority of
scientists saying GMO foods are safe to eat. On their beliefs in
human-caused climate change and human evolution, the groups differed by
more than 30 percentage points. Differences nearly as large are seen on vaccination, animal research, and offshore oil drilling.

Emily M. Eng, NG Staff. Source: Pew Research Center

"We are seeing the gaps as larger now across a large set of issues," Funk says, compared to past polls.

Political Science

Though scientists point to a lack of public
understanding of science, "having scientists speak at Kiwanis club
meetings is not going to change a lot of people's views about science,"
says polling expert Jon Miller of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

The survey results don't differ a great deal from
past polls, but this only reinforces anxiety over the future of science,
Miller adds. Support for research has gone from a bedrock American
principle to one suffering fissures from political fistfights over human
evolution, embryonic stem cells, climate change, and other issues.

"A lot of scientific issues have become
politicized," Miller says. "I think this report is kind of tiptoeing
around that reality, where the [U.S.] Republican party has sought
political support from voters with religious views who are often hostile
to science."

To his point, an American Sociological Review study also reported on Thursday that
roughly one in five U.S. adults is deeply religious and accepts
astronomy, radioactivity, and genetics as settled science but rejects
human evolution and the big bang. These are high-income, well-educated
people who are "scientifically literate" and view science favorably,
according to study lead author Timothy O'Brien of the University of Evansville in Indiana. They just toss overboard science that clashes with literal readings of the Bible.

Over the last decade, public opinion researchers such as Yale's Dan Kahan have found that people's views on many scientific issues, such as climate and evolution, are largely driven by their cultural views. Sociologist Robert Brulle of Drexel University in Philadelphia likewise found that when political leaders change their views on climate change, voters are more likely to be swayed than they are by the voices of scientists.

Leshner, however, disagrees. "Political leaders
don't carry the same kind of credibility that well-informed scientists
do," he says.

He argues that scientists can better sway public
opinion by making the case for science in smaller venues, such as
retirement communities or library groups, instead of the traditional
lecture hall. "It is important that the public understands that
scientists are people too."

Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?

We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge—from climate change to vaccinations—faces furious opposition.Some even have doubts about the moon landing.

By Joel Achenbach

Photographs by Richard Barnes

There’s a scene in Stanley Kubrick’s comic masterpiece Dr. Strangelove
in which Jack D. Ripper, an American general who’s gone rogue and
ordered a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, unspools his paranoid
worldview—and the explanation for why he drinks “only distilled water,
or rainwater, and only pure grain alcohol”—to Lionel Mandrake, a
dizzy-with-anxiety group captain in the Royal Air Force.Ripper: Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation? Fluoridation of water?Mandrake: Ah, yes, I have heard of that, Jack. Yes, yes.Ripper: Well, do you know what it is?Mandrake: No. No, I don’t know what it is. No.Ripper: Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?The movie came out in 1964, by which time the health
benefits of fluoridation had been thoroughly established, and
antifluoridation conspiracy theories could be the stuff of comedy. So
you might be surprised to learn that, half a century later, fluoridation
continues to incite fear and paranoia. In 2013 citizens in Portland,
Oregon, one of only a few major American cities that don’t fluoridate
their water, blocked a plan by local officials to do so. Opponents
didn’t like the idea of the government adding “chemicals” to their
water. They claimed that fluoride could be harmful to human health.
Actually fluoride is a natural mineral that, in the weak
concentrations used in public drinking water systems, hardens tooth
enamel and prevents tooth decay—a cheap and safe way to improve dental
health for everyone, rich or poor, conscientious brusher or not. That’s
the scientific and medical consensus.
To which some people in Portland, echoing antifluoridation activists around the world, reply: We don’t believe you.
We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge—from the
safety of fluoride and vaccines to the reality of climate change—faces
organized and often furious opposition. Empowered by their own sources
of information and their own interpretations of research, doubters have
declared war on the consensus of experts. There are so many of these
controversies these days, you’d think a diabolical agency had put
something in the water to make people argumentative. And there’s so much
talk about the trend these days—in books, articles, and academic
conferences—that science doubt itself has become a pop-culture meme. In
the recent movie Interstellar, set in a futuristic, downtrodden
America where NASA has been forced into hiding, school textbooks say the
Apollo moon landings were faked.
In a sense all this is not surprising. Our lives are permeated by
science and technology as never before. For many of us this new world is
wondrous, comfortable, and rich in rewards—but also more complicated
and sometimes unnerving. We now face risks we can’t easily analyze.
We’re asked to accept, for example, that it’s safe to eat food
containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) because, the experts
point out, there’s no evidence that it isn’t and no reason to believe
that altering genes precisely in a lab is more dangerous than altering
them wholesale through traditional breeding. But to some people the very
idea of transferring genes between species conjures up mad scientists
running amok—and so, two centuries after Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, they talk about Frankenfood.
The world crackles with real and imaginary hazards, and
distinguishing the former from the latter isn’t easy. Should we be
afraid that the Ebola virus, which is spread only by direct contact with
bodily fluids, will mutate into an airborne superplague? The scientific
consensus says that’s extremely unlikely: No virus has ever been
observed to completely change its mode of transmission in humans, and
there’s zero evidence that the latest strain of Ebola is any different.
But type “airborne Ebola” into an Internet search engine, and you’ll
enter a dystopia where this virus has almost supernatural powers,
including the power to kill us all.
In this bewildering world we have to decide what to believe and
how to act on that. In principle that’s what science is for. “Science is
not a body of facts,” says geophysicist Marcia McNutt, who once headed
the U.S. Geological Survey and is now editor of Science, the
prestigious journal. “Science is a method for deciding whether what we
choose to believe has a basis in the laws of nature or not.” But that
method doesn’t come naturally to most of us. And so we run into trouble,
again and again.

Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division

Square Intuitions Die HardThat
the Earth is round has been known since antiquity—Columbus knew he
wouldn’t sail off the edge of the world—but alternative geographies
persisted even after circumnavigations had become common. This 1893 map
by Orlando Ferguson, a South Dakota businessman, is a loopy variation on
19th-century flat-Earth beliefs. Flat-Earthers held that the planet was
centered on the North Pole and bounded by a wall of ice, with the sun,
moon, and planets a few hundred miles above the surface. Science often
demands that we discount our direct sensory experiences—such as seeing
the sun cross the sky as if circling the Earth—in favor of theories that
challenge our beliefs about our place in the universe.

The trouble goes way back, of course. The scientific method
leads us to truths that are less than self-evident, often mind-blowing,
and sometimes hard to swallow. In the early 17th century, when Galileo
claimed that the Earth spins on its axis and orbits the sun, he wasn’t
just rejecting church doctrine. He was asking people to believe
something that defied common sense—because it sure looks like the sun’s
going around the Earth, and you can’t feel the Earth spinning. Galileo
was put on trial and forced to recant. Two centuries later Charles
Darwin escaped that fate. But his idea that all life on Earth evolved
from a primordial ancestor and that we humans are distant cousins of
apes, whales, and even deep-sea mollusks is still a big ask for a lot of
people. So is another 19th-century notion: that carbon dioxide, an
invisible gas that we all exhale all the time and that makes up less
than a tenth of one percent of the atmosphere, could be affecting
Earth’s climate.
Even when we intellectually accept these precepts of science, we
subconsciously cling to our intuitions—what researchers call our naive
beliefs. A recent study by Andrew Shtulman of Occidental College showed
that even students with an advanced science education had a hitch in
their mental gait when asked to affirm or deny that humans are descended
from sea animals or that Earth goes around the sun. Both truths are
counterintuitive. The students, even those who correctly marked “true,”
were slower to answer those questions than questions about whether
humans are descended from tree-dwelling creatures (also true but easier
to grasp) or whether the moon goes around the Earth (also true but
intuitive). Shtulman’s research indicates that as we become
scientifically literate, we repress our naive beliefs but never
eliminate them entirely. They lurk in our brains, chirping at us as we
try to make sense of the world.
Most of us do that by relying on personal experience and
anecdotes, on stories rather than statistics. We might get a
prostate-specific antigen test, even though it’s no longer generally
recommended, because it caught a close friend’s cancer—and we pay less
attention to statistical evidence, painstakingly compiled through
multiple studies, showing that the test rarely saves lives but triggers
many unnecessary surgeries. Or we hear about a cluster of cancer cases
in a town with a hazardous waste dump, and we assume pollution caused
the cancers. Yet just because two things happened together doesn’t mean
one caused the other, and just because events are clustered doesn’t mean
they’re not still random.
We have trouble digesting randomness; our brains crave pattern and
meaning. Science warns us, however, that we can deceive ourselves. To
be confident there’s a causal connection between the dump and the
cancers, you need statistical analysis showing that there are many more
cancers than would be expected randomly, evidence that the victims were
exposed to chemicals from the dump, and evidence that the chemicals
really can cause cancer.

Photo: Bettman/Corbis

Evolution on TrialIn
1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, where John Scopes was standing trial for
teaching evolution in high school, a creationist bookseller hawked his
wares. Modern biology makes no sense without the concept of evolution,
but religious activists in the United States continue to demand that
creationism be taught as an alternative in biology class. When science
conflicts with a person’s core beliefs, it usually loses.

Even for scientists, the scientific method is a hard discipline.
Like the rest of us, they’re vulnerable to what they call confirmation
bias—the tendency to look for and see only evidence that confirms what
they already believe. But unlike the rest of us, they submit their ideas
to formal peer review before publishing them. Once their results are
published, if they’re important enough, other scientists will try to
reproduce them—and, being congenitally skeptical and competitive, will
be very happy to announce that they don’t hold up. Scientific results
are always provisional, susceptible to being overturned by some future
experiment or observation. Scientists rarely proclaim an absolute truth
or absolute certainty. Uncertainty is inevitable at the frontiers of
knowledge.
Sometimes scientists fall short of the ideals of the scientific
method. Especially in biomedical research, there’s a disturbing trend
toward results that can’t be reproduced outside the lab that found them,
a trend that has prompted a push for greater transparency about how
experiments are conducted. Francis Collins, the director of the National
Institutes of Health, worries about the “secret sauce”—specialized
procedures, customized software, quirky ingredients—that researchers
don’t share with their colleagues. But he still has faith in the larger
enterprise.
“Science will find the truth,” Collins says. “It may get it wrong
the first time and maybe the second time, but ultimately it will find
the truth.” That provisional quality of science is another thing a lot
of people have trouble with. To some climate change skeptics, for
example, the fact that a few scientists in the 1970s were worried (quite
reasonably, it seemed at the time) about the possibility of a coming
ice age is enough to discredit the concern about global warming now.Last fall the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
which consists of hundreds of scientists operating under the auspices of
the United Nations, released its fifth report in the past 25 years.
This one repeated louder and clearer than ever the consensus of the
world’s scientists: The planet’s surface temperature has risen by about
1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 130 years, and human actions,
including the burning of fossil fuels, are extremely likely to have been
the dominant cause of the warming since the mid-20th century. Many
people in the United States—a far greater percentage than in other
countries—retain doubts about that consensus or believe that climate
activists are using the threat of global warming to attack the free
market and industrial society generally. Senator James Inhofe of
Oklahoma, one of the most powerful Republican voices on environmental
matters, has long declared global warming a hoax.
The idea that hundreds of scientists from all over the world would
collaborate on such a vast hoax is laughable—scientists love to debunk
one another. It’s very clear, however, that organizations funded in part
by the fossil fuel industry have deliberately tried to undermine the
public’s understanding of the scientific consensus by promoting a few
skeptics.
The news media give abundant attention to such mavericks,
naysayers, professional controversialists, and table thumpers. The media
would also have you believe that science is full of shocking
discoveries made by lone geniuses. Not so. The (boring) truth is that it
usually advances incrementally, through the steady accretion of data
and insights gathered by many people over many years. So it has been
with the consensus on climate change. That’s not about to go poof with
the next thermometer reading.
But industry PR, however misleading, isn’t enough to explain why
only 40 percent of Americans, according to the most recent poll from the
Pew Research Center, accept that human activity is the dominant cause
of global warming.
The “science communication problem,” as it’s blandly called by the
scientists who study it, has yielded abundant new research into how
people decide what to believe—and why they so often don’t accept the
scientific consensus. It’s not that they can’t grasp it, according to
Dan Kahan of Yale University. In one study he asked 1,540 Americans, a
representative sample, to rate the threat of climate change on a scale
of zero to ten. Then he correlated that with the subjects’ science
literacy. He found that higher literacy was associated with stronger
views—at both ends of the spectrum. Science literacy promoted
polarization on climate, not consensus. According to Kahan, that’s
because people tend to use scientific knowledge to reinforce beliefs
that have already been shaped by their worldview.
Americans fall into two basic camps, Kahan says. Those with a more
“egalitarian” and “communitarian” mind-set are generally suspicious of
industry and apt to think it’s up to something dangerous that calls for
government regulation; they’re likely to see the risks of climate
change. In contrast, people with a “hierarchical” and “individualistic”
mind-set respect leaders of industry and don’t like government
interfering in their affairs; they’re apt to reject warnings about
climate change, because they know what accepting them could lead to—some
kind of tax or regulation to limit emissions.
In the U.S., climate change somehow has become a litmus test that
identifies you as belonging to one or the other of these two
antagonistic tribes. When we argue about it, Kahan says, we’re actually
arguing about who we are, what our crowd is. We’re thinking, People like
us believe this. People like that do not believe this. For a
hierarchical individualist, Kahan says, it’s not irrational to reject
established climate science: Accepting it wouldn’t change the world, but
it might get him thrown out of his tribe.
“Take a barber in a rural town in South Carolina,” Kahan has
written. “Is it a good idea for him to implore his customers to sign a
petition urging Congress to take action on climate change? No. If he
does, he will find himself out of a job, just as his former congressman,
Bob Inglis, did when he himself proposed such action.”
Science appeals to our rational brain, but our beliefs are
motivated largely by emotion, and the biggest motivation is remaining
tight with our peers. “We’re all in high school. We’ve never left high
school,” says Marcia McNutt. “People still have a need to fit in, and
that need to fit in is so strong that local values and local opinions
are always trumping science. And they will continue to trump science,
especially when there is no clear downside to ignoring science.”
Meanwhile the Internet makes it easier than ever for climate
skeptics and doubters of all kinds to find their own information and
experts. Gone are the days when a small number of powerful
institutions—elite universities, encyclopedias, major news
organizations, even National Geographic—served as gatekeepers of
scientific information. The Internet has democratized information, which
is a good thing. But along with cable TV, it has made it possible to
live in a “filter bubble” that lets in only the information with which
you already agree.
How to penetrate the bubble? How to convert climate skeptics?
Throwing more facts at them doesn’t help. Liz Neeley, who helps train
scientists to be better communicators at an organization called Compass,
says that people need to hear from believers they can trust, who share
their fundamental values. She has personal experience with this. Her
father is a climate change skeptic and gets most of his information on
the issue from conservative media. In exasperation she finally
confronted him: “Do you believe them or me?” She told him she believes
the scientists who research climate change and knows many of them
personally. “If you think I’m wrong,” she said, “then you’re telling me
that you don’t trust me.” Her father’s stance on the issue softened. But
it wasn’t the facts that did it.If you’re a rationalist, there’s something a little
dispiriting about all this. In Kahan’s descriptions of how we decide
what to believe, what we decide sometimes sounds almost incidental.
Those of us in the science-communication business are as tribal as
anyone else, he told me. We believe in scientific ideas not because we
have truly evaluated all the evidence but because we feel an affinity
for the scientific community. When I mentioned to Kahan that I fully
accept evolution, he said, “Believing in evolution is just a description
about you. It’s not an account of how you reason.”
Maybe—except that evolution actually happened. Biology is
incomprehensible without it. There aren’t really two sides to all these
issues. Climate change is happening. Vaccines really do save lives.
Being right does matter—and the science tribe has a long track record of
getting things right in the end. Modern society is built on things it
got right.
Doubting science also has consequences. The people who believe
vaccines cause autism—often well educated and affluent, by the way—are
undermining “herd immunity” to such diseases as whooping cough and
measles. The anti-vaccine movement has been going strong since the
prestigious British medical journal the Lancet published a study
in 1998 linking a common vaccine to autism. The journal later retracted
the study, which was thoroughly discredited. But the notion of a
vaccine-autism connection has been endorsed by celebrities and
reinforced through the usual Internet filters. (Anti-vaccine activist
and actress Jenny McCarthy famously said on the Oprah Winfrey Show, “The University of Google is where I got my degree from.”)
In the climate debate the consequences of doubt are likely global
and enduring. In the U.S., climate change skeptics have achieved their
fundamental goal of halting legislative action to combat global warming.
They haven’t had to win the debate on the merits; they’ve merely had to
fog the room enough to keep laws governing greenhouse gas emissions
from being enacted.
Some environmental activists want scientists to emerge from their
ivory towers and get more involved in the policy battles. Any scientist
going that route needs to do so carefully, says Liz Neeley. “That line
between science communication and advocacy is very hard to step back
from,” she says. In the debate over climate change the central
allegation of the skeptics is that the science saying it’s real and a
serious threat is politically tinged, driven by environmental activism
and not hard data. That’s not true, and it slanders honest scientists.
But it becomes more likely to be seen as plausible if scientists go
beyond their professional expertise and begin advocating specific
policies.
It’s their very detachment, what you might call the
cold-bloodedness of science, that makes science the killer app. It’s the
way science tells us the truth rather than what we’d like the truth to
be. Scientists can be as dogmatic as anyone else—but their dogma is
always wilting in the hot glare of new research. In science it’s not a
sin to change your mind when the evidence demands it. For some people,
the tribe is more important than the truth; for the best scientists, the
truth is more important than the tribe.
Scientific thinking has to be taught, and sometimes it’s not
taught well, McNutt says. Students come away thinking of science as a
collection of facts, not a method. Shtulman’s research has shown that
even many college students don’t really understand what evidence is. The
scientific method doesn’t come naturally—but if you think about it,
neither does democracy. For most of human history neither existed. We
went around killing each other to get on a throne, praying to a rain
god, and for better and much worse, doing things pretty much as our
ancestors did.
Now we have incredibly rapid change, and it’s scary sometimes.
It’s not all progress. Our science has made us the dominant organisms,
with all due respect to ants and blue-green algae, and we’re changing
the whole planet. Of course we’re right to ask questions about some of
the things science and technology allow us to do. “Everybody should be
questioning,” says McNutt. “That’s a hallmark of a scientist. But then
they should use the scientific method, or trust people using the
scientific method, to decide which way they fall on those questions.” We
need to get a lot better at finding answers, because it’s certain the
questions won’t be getting any simpler.

Washington Post science writer Joel Achenbach has contributed to National Geographic since 1998. Photographer Richard Barnes’s last feature was the September 2014 cover story on Nero.

Just writing to let you know I think you did a fantastic job in your interview on National Public Radio and with this ad (see ad below).

With that said, all the progressives, liberals and leftists who supported Obama, first to get him nominated and then in two general elections, supported and voted for Wall Street's imperialist agenda as Obama proclaimed very clearly his support for this reactionary, warmongering agenda--- and, no doubt, this support, continued support, for Obama will lead to the backing of Hillary Clinton when liberals, progressives and leftists should be embarked on bringing forward a working class based progressive people's party putting forward a clear program and platform for peace, social and economic justice challenging Wall Street for political and economic power insisting that all financial aid for the barbaric Israeli killing machine is ended.

The few Democrats who will boycott Netanyahu's speech will end up turning right (pun intended) around and vote for continued funding of the Israeli killing machine whether Obama, Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush is president.

None of these Democrats, nor Bernie Sanders--- for sure not Elizabeth Warren, can be counted on to stand up to Wall Street and its imperialist wars.

Democrats will campaign on their so-called "economic populism" which is without condemnation nor recognition of the detrimental way financing militarism and wars affects the economy and our living environment.

That these Democrats are supporting a bunch of anti-Semites goose-stepping backwards in the footprints of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Mannerheim in the Ukraine should tell us all we need to know that these Democrats have no respect for peace or democracy let alone social and economic justice.

Hopefully, you will bring forward a discussion about the need for a new political party.

This is the ad, signed by over 2,600 people, that appears today in the New York Times, and tomorrow on Capitol Hill in "The Hiill" newspaper (read in every Congressional office and in the White House) can be viewed here:

The 2,600 plus who signed include figures like the novelist and Princeton U. Professor Joyce Carol Oates, novelist and Ms. co-founder Letty Cottin Pogrebin, professor of Jewish Studies at Darthmouth College (and daughter of Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Jewish theologian who marched with MLKjr. at Selma) Susannah Heschel, Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul & Mary, the legendary Jewish folk singer Theodore Bikel who played the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof over 2,000 times, Aryeh Cohen professor of Rabbinic Literature at American Jewish University, Rabbi William Cutter professor at Hebrew Union College, NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller, Columbia U professor Sassia Sassken, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton Abraham Udovitch, Sharon Kleinbaum, the firebrand rabbi of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah—the country's largest and best-known gay synagogue (and many other rabbis).

The ad was mentioned in USA Today as well as in the NPR--All Things Considered report on Netanyahu's speech to AIPAC today. We were the only peace organization being quoted in the mass media about our opposition to a war with Iran, our support for Obama's attempt to reach a compromise with Iran that would allow them to develop atomic energy for peaceful purposes while assuring the rest of the world (through inspections) that it was not developing weapons-grade materials, in exchange for the US reducing the sanctions rather than escalating them as Netanyahu seeks. And we are the only group opposing Netanyahu that is publicly promoting an alternative--what we call a Strategy of Generosity--and actually have a worked out version of a Global Marshall Plan that deals with many of the pifalls of past attempts at international cooperation (please read it atwww.tikkun.org/gmpand download the 32 page brochure).

Why is this ad different from all the other media talk about the Netanyahu visit?

In all the other media chatter about Netanyahu the focus is on the supposed conflict between Obama and Netanyahu. That misses the actual significance of this visit. Prime Minister Netanyahu-- together with major support in both parties engendered by AIPAC and the Christian Zionists--is seeking to push the U.S. on a path that will eventually lead to military strikes and a possible war between the U.S. and Iran. Historians will look back at this moment to see whether the American people will allow this to happen or not. The issue is not whether Obama likes Netanyahu, but whether the American people can be once again (as they were in the lead up to the Iraq war) misled into believing that there is a nuclear threat that must be stopped by coercion and eventually by military action. That is the question highlighted by the Tikkun ad, and why it is newsworthy.

The ad was sponsored by Tikkun Magazine, the voice of liberal and progressive Jews and our non-Jewish allies--along with our interfaith and secular-humanist-welcoming Network of Spiritual Progresives. Tikkun was created as the progressive alternative to the neo-cons in the Jewish world, and the intellectual voice of all those Jews who believe that the best way to support Israel's security is to also support the creation of a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel.

The ad was written by Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, in conjunction with its inner editorial board (also listed in the ad).

I was asked a question; this was my answer.

At a recent forum in Thief River Falls, Minnesota where I was on a panel discussing Minnesota's financial woes, I was asked what I would do if I was governor.

This is a fair question.

This was my answer:

Please keep in mind as I proceed with my thoughts that there is a "fare" and a "fair." One is spelled "f-a-r-e" and means something completely different from "fair" spelled "f-a-i-r."

If I were elected governor of Minnesota the very first reforms I would implement to solve the state's budget problems would be:

1. A hefty tax on the rich like Mark Dayton promised as he campaigned for election but reneged on once elected.

2. Substantially increase the taconite tax; the mining companies are robbing us blind leaving us with poverty and pits filled with pollution while they abscond with the profits. This has to end.

3. Place a really hefty tax on the forestry industry in the form of stumpage fees; cut down any tree and you pay what the tree is really worth.

4. I would place toll booths at the entrances to each and every casino in Minnesota charging the exact same fee Minnesotans are charged to enter our State Parks. Anyone who can afford to gamble can afford such a fee. I would also initiate a "gambling license" on all gamblers. Just like a fishing license

Like most of you, I am fed up with this "circus in the Cities." Democrats and Republicans don't know the difference between the words "f-a-r-e" and "f-a-i-r;" we should give them all a dictionary not our votes.

I think most Minnesotans would agree with these four solutions. So, what kind of democracy do we have where politicians won't do what people want and expect?

It's just like the priorities at the national level... like they say in the Navy--- it's a SNAFU. If you don't know what a S-N-A-F-U stands for, look it up in the Urban Dictionary on your computer when you get home.

If the United States government would stop spending our tax dollars on this insane militarism and all these dirty imperialist wars we would have the money to put people to work solving the problems of the people.

I recently read this little book by former Democratic Vice-president under FDR, Henry Wallace, "Sixty Million Jobs." I would encourage everyone to read this book because it was in 1945 when this book was published to support the Full Employment Act of 1945 when Democrats and Republicans--- at Wall Street's insistence--- decided not to take Henry Wallace's advice provided in this book that our country began going way off track.

Henry Wallace pointed out that Peace will put everyone to work which will solve just about every major problem we have in this country.

Can the Penokees be saved by people attacking workers' rights?

Question...

Who gave their consent to make this a "two-party system" where only one class gets representation?

How capitalism works...

How capitalism works explained from a worker's perspective...

Abba Ramos, a veteran organizer in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union:

"If they can get a trained monkey to unload that boxcar tomorrow morning, rest assured, they'll have them over there and they'll have some bananas for lunch, and you'll be out on the street looking for work. Simple as that. You've got to remember, they follow only one rule of economic law, and that's that maximum production-minimum cost yields the greatest amount of profit. They don't deviate from that."

Helpful tip

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Taking it to the streets... Obama has to go.

A program for real change...

* Peace--- end the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and shutdown the 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil.

* A National Public Health Care System - ten million new jobs.

* A National Public Child Care System - three to five million new jobs.

* WPA - three million new jobs.

* CCC - two million new jobs.

* Tax the hell out of the rich and cut the military budget by ending the wars to pay for it all which will create full employment.

* Enforce Affirmative Action; end discrimination.

* Raise the minimum wage to a real living wage

* What tax-payers subsidize in the way of businesses, tax-payers should own and reap the profits from.

* Moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions.

* Defend democracy by defending workers' rights including the right to collective bargaining for improving the lives and livelihoods of working people.

* Roll-back and freeze the price of food, electricity, gas and heating fuels; not wages, benefits or pensions.

* Wall Street is our enemy.

Let's talk about the politics and economics of livelihood for a real change.

Search This Blog

Follow and support the important working class' victory at the polls in Canada

Canadian workers and their New Democratic Party are blazing the path of independence from the big-business controlled political parties. Manitoba will be having elections in the fall. Workers here in the United States should be paying attention to Canadian politics as there is a lot to learn. Ask your union to link its websites to the Canadian Labour Congress, New Democratic Party and Manitoba NDP.

Also, I would encourage you to paste this into your own personal blogs, web sites and FaceBook and other social netwoking sites.

Contact info...

About Me

I live in northern Minnesota with my dog Fred, a Chocolate Lab. I have been involved in the peace, labor, civil rights, and environmental movements for over 30 years, and I am a socialist. I would encourage everyone to get involved in promoting the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which came into existence on December 10, 1948; we should strive to use the yearly anniversary of this document to popularize it. We need to struggle to create a more progressive, socially just society where all working people receive real living wages and have a voice at work, and in their communities. I am working with casino workers across Minnesota who are trying to organize a union. I am also working with people in northern Minnesota struggling to save the Big Bog, our primary freshwater aquifer--- this bog is being mined for peat. In my spare time during the spring and fall you can find me fly fishing on the Dark River, a pristine designated trout stream;in the winter ice fishing on Lake-of-the-Woods.
I look forward to hearing from you. Nothing human is alien to me.

Important Notice...

Due to recent budget cuts and the cost of electricity, gas and oil, as well as current market conditions and the continued decline of the economy, The Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off.

Building a new era of justice and peace

The United States has 800 military bases on foreign soil...What we need--- instead--- is 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States where people can universally access, for free, all their health care needs from pre-natal care, to general health care to eye, dental and mental care right through to burial.

Instead of moving in this progressive direction, President Barack Obama and the United States Congress are moving in a most reactionary direction towards establishing military bases in outer space as they seek to insure the profits of both the merchants of death and destruction and the profit-driven health care industries... talk about skewed priorities and your wacky ideas which will execerbate the problems surrounding the failing capitalist economy, and ideas devoid of common sense.

In addition to these 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil, Barack Obama and the United States Congress continue funding--- with our tax-dollars--- the Israeli killing machine to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. Where is the "change?"

This is the change Americans want, and the change we need:

A network of 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States would create over four-million good-paying, decent jobs--- talk about your "economic stimulus" package!

We would be redistributing the wealth as we are planting the seeds of socialism while helping to eradicate poverty by keeping people healthy and getting them well when sick.

Think about this kind of solution in relation to what Barack Obama, the U.S. Congress and the Wall Street bankers and coupon clippers are offering the American people, and the peoples of the world... just what is the reason for bailing out the banks and AIG and maintaining more than 800 expensive U.S. military bases of foreign soil?

The Mt. Carmel Clinic in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada offers us a glimpse at what militarization and wars continue to rob us of.

The problems created by Wall Street will not be solved as long as the military-financial-industrial complex is allowed to squander human and natural resources on militarism and wars... we might just as well be dumping these resources out into the ocean... at least no one would die in wars.

These merchants of death and destruction must be stopped if humanity is to survive in a livable world.

The time has come to talk about working class Marxist politics and the economics of livelihood... capitalism has failed humanity miserably and left us a real mess to clean up.

Capitalism is on the skids to oblivion and unless we take a "left turn" we will continue down this road to perdition.

Something for working people to think about and discuss around the dinner table... the capitalist sooth-Sayers certainly are not going to broach such solutions to the problems of working people as they hide behind the skirt of Rosy Scenario as this global capitalist economic depression intensifies while wars rage on.

The times and conditions call for "building a new era of justice and peace;" this is one step in that direction; this is the change the American people voted for.

Contact Barack Obama, let him know what is on your mind...

A gift returned...

Thank you for the 3 bottles of wine that you sent me as season’s greetings. I wish to you, your family and everybody in the Embassy a happy new year. Good health and progress to you all.

Unhappily, I noticed that the wine you have sent me has been produced in the Golan Heights. I have been taught since I was very young not to steal and not to accept products of theft. So I cannot possibly accept this gift and I must return it back to you.

As you know, your country occupies illegally the Golan Heights which belongs to Syria, according to the International Law and numerous decisions of the International Community.

I take the opportunity to express my hope that Israel will find security within its internationally recognized borders and the terrorist activities against Israel territory by Hamas or anybody else will be contained and made impossible, but I also hope that your government will cease practicing the policy of collective punishment which was applied on a mass scale by Hitler and his armies.

Actions such as those of these days of the Israel military in Gaza remind the Greek people of holocausts such as in Kalavrita or Doxato or Distomo and certainly in the ghetto of Warsaw.

With these thoughts allow me to express to you my best wishes for you, the Israeli people and all the people of our region of the world.

Athens, 30/12/2008

Theodoros Pangalos, Member of Parliament (Greece)

Auto workers fight for union recognition 1930's

This demonstration was organized by the Trade Union Unity League under the leadership of Phil Raymond who was an organizer of the auto workers

Everybody knows...

Historic victory

Communist Elected President of Cyprus

AKEL anti-fascist, anti-imperialist elected

Congratulations to AKEL and Dimitris Christofias.... GC of AKEL and President of the House of Representatives comrade Dimitris Christofias and GC of KKE (Communist Party Of Greece) comrade Aleca Papariga at the rally against the war in Iraq a few hundred meters towards the USA Embassy in Nicosia

Madam Labor Secretary

International Women’s Day

Ann Holdreith

Michigan poet--- The poetry of Ann Holdreith merges the mystical with the everyday. A chapter of her work is included in "Beyond the Lines", an anthology of Michigan authors published by Plainview Press. Her publishing credits also include: Wayne State University, Gravity Presses, Dixie Phoenix, Poetry Motel, Free Fall, Snakeskin, Gravity Webzine, Stirring (Best Love Poems), Aether, Friction Magazine and a Pushcart Prize nomination. Ann has taught for the Detroit Writer's Voice and is a Magna Cum Laude graduate in Fine Art and Literature from the University of Detroit. She has featured at the Michigan Opera Theatre, The Detroit Festival for the Arts and Spring Fed Arts of Detroit. Her riveting performance style synthesizes her background as an actress, vocalist, dancer and performance artist. Ann has been teaching her Fire Seed workshop, designed to free the authentic self, since 1987. Her work is dedicated to the full expression and elevation of the human spirit.

Autumn Sky

By: Ann Holdreith

On the ride home from Toledo, from a worn out school resurrected for good honest men, for men with kids and grandkids, guys who eat sugar doughnuts and wink while they hammer-out fenders and hurl the carcasses of metal beasts, against autumn’s haunted sky,I wonder if they remember the grip of thighs around engine-lessmuscle and sweat, ragged dirty hair assaulting the wind, buttocks and back pounding with hooves that know exactly where they belong on this earth.

On the way from Toledo, a pulsing cloud of blackbirds hurls its wings against the dying blue;dark umbrellas opening to summer’s last ride.

Carlton, Minnesota

Along the North Shore of Lake Superior

"Peace Bridge" demonstration

St. Paul/Minneapolis, Minnesota

Democratic majority in the Michigan House abandons casino workers...

Wednesday, August 8, 2007--- Lansing, Michigan. By a shameful vote of 63 to 41... not a single Michigan Legislator--- with the exception of one lone Republican--- would take a stand in defense of the rights of casino workers to be employed in a workplace free of second-hand smoke. Not one single Michigan Legislator would take a stand for casino workers being paid real living wages protected by state and federal labor laws along with the right to organize for collective bargaining. House Democratic Floor Leader Steve Tobacman and Democratic Representative Barbara Farrah did this dirty work for the Fertitta Family and the Kansas City mob which will "skim" the profits from the Gun Lake Casino like they have done in all the other casinos managed by the Fertitta Family. The United Auto Workers union leadership, fearing estrangement and being shunned by the Democratic Party, dropped its feeble opposition to this legislation giving a hint as to how they intend to abandon autoworkers in the present contract negotiations with the "Big Three."

Super Profits and Crises; Modern U.S. Capitalism by Victor Perlo

This is a must read book for anyone wanting to fully understand the present economic crisis.

Victor Perlo was a noted researcher and economist in the Franklin D. Roosevelt and Truman Administrations.

Perlo has made economics easy to understand for everyone.

Did anyone notice former President Jimmy Carter did not address the Democratic National Convention?

Former President Jimmy Carter speaks about his controversial book 'Palestine Peace Not Apartheid' at Jewish-founded Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts January 23, 2007. [Reuters]

Owl on cold winter day

near Jacobson, Minnesota

Minnesotans give United States Senator Norm Coleman a piece of their mind about the Iraq War...

The protest was organized by the Twin Cities Peace Campaign--Focus on Iraq and WAMM (Women Against Military Madness)

As these Minnesotans protested outside Coleman's office...

Others went inside to write their statements calling for an end to this dirty war in Iraq

These protests at Coleman's local office will continue as long as he continues to support the war

Among the concerned citizens opposed to the war in Iraq were members of many church groups, the Iraq Peace Action Coalition, Veterans for Peace, the Minneapolis Club of the Communist Party USA and members of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, Military Families Speak Out... the diversity of the demonstrators reflected a broad cross-section of the Minnesota public.

Destroying a people, their homeland, their right to survive...

Tours of Northern Minnesota...

I offer guided tours of Northern Minnesota that include visits to historic Mesaba Co-op Park, historic buildings and cemetaries on the Iron Range, the Wellstone Memorial, "Mine View," United States Steel's Minntac operation, the Big Bog, Red Lake.
A great opportunity for photographers.
Individual, family, small or large groups. Meals and overnight accomodations can be arranged.
Let's really explore Northern Minnesota.

Working class songs

Grohmann Museum

It's time to start thinking outside the capitalist box...

We need to get off the beaten path and begin to explore the cooperative socialist alternative to capitalism. The Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party together with the "Red" Finns on the Iron Range created a solid progressive foundation; we can continue to build on the legacy they left to us as we network and grow our movement for peace and social justice by establishing working class clubs for education and action... now is the time to begin discussing how we are going to put an end to capitalism as we struggle to end this dirty war for oil in Iraq and work towards socialized health care by taking the first step with single-payer, universal health care... these discussions should take place frequently around the kitchen table with family, friends, and fellow workers.

Alan Maki and Fred

Off the beaten path

Writing a Letter the Editor

Write A Letter To The Editor--- a very effective way to influence public opinion.

By: Alan L. Maki

Letters to the Editorare an effective way of speaking to a large group of people, and often getting the attention of elected officials; but, most important is that elected public officials understand that through a Letter to the Editor you are speaking directly to your friends, neighbors and fellow workers in the proverbial public square and these politicians will understand that their own positions are being publicly challenged and people are beginning to “think outside the box” which often leads to movement building.

First, you should pick an issue that you feel strongly about and you are familiar with; citing your own personal experiences with unemployment and poverty or with war makes for a very strong Letter to the Editor.

One important thing to remember is that newspapers like to publish letters that have a local tone; so your letter should address how the issue is pertinent to people in your area.

Also, it is best to always refer to an article that was published in the newspaper you are submitting your letter to. State that you are opposing or supporting the views in the article or editorial. Give the date and page of publication you are referencing.

If you need the address for your local paper, check out this site which has links to newspapersall over Minnesota: http://www.mnnews.com/

Remember to show your published Letter to the Editor to everyone you know; encourage them to write, too.

If you and a couple friends get Letters published you can photo-copy them and use it as a leaflet.

One effective way to use Letters to the Editor to build movements is to write a Letter and then get friends to follow up with Letters of their own on different aspects of the issue.

Remember to stick to the newspaper's guidelines as to limitation on words, etc. that the newspaper establishes.

*If your Letter doesn't get published, call the Editor and ask for the reason your letter wasn't published. Often the Editor will suggest “corrections” that you can make and then you can resubmit the Letter for publication consideration. Also, don't waste a Letter to the Editor; submit it to another paper if one doesn't publish it.

There are some important working class issues many Editors of corporate newspapers will not publish unless pressured to do so. If this happens then take the opportunity to publish your Letter as a leaflet with a big, bold headline like this:The Duluth News-Tribune refused to publish this--- why? What is happening to democracy in our community?

If you are working on an issue or problem, gather together a few people and have a Letter to the Editor writing party at your home, in a union hall, community center, library, church or park. Libraries are good places to have such a party because you have many resources available.

Each of us is like one little snowflake; we don't amount to much... but watch out for a Minnesota blizzard!

Banner used to promote my blog.

One of a few new banners for promoting my blog... click to enlarge; watch for my displays at gatherings, demonstrations, forums--- when you see my displays stop to chat.

How capitalism works...

How capitalism works explained from a worker's perspective...

Abba Ramos, a veteran organizer in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union:

"If they can get a trained monkey to unload that boxcar tomorrow morning, rest assured, they'll have them over there and they'll have some bananas for lunch, and you'll be out on the street looking for work. Simple as that. You've got to remember, they follow only one rule of economic law, and that's that maximum production-minimum cost yields the greatest amount of profit. They don't deviate from that."

In the streets for peace, social and economic justice

St. Paul, Minnesota; March 19, 2011

Money should go to health care and jobs, not wars

Duluth News Tribune

Barack Obama has turned out to be just one more Wall Street flim-flam man and con artist posing as a president while selling health insurance on the side. Here we are spending billions on wars with unemployment soaring as the economy collapses. With Obama’s health-care reform, the for-profit health-care system is in an even bigger mess.

Listening to Democrats making excuses for Obama has been sickening. People voted for peace and got more war. People voted for health-care reform and got a health insurance industry bailout and profit maximization act. The Democrats scream, “Jobs, jobs, jobs!” and we get more unemployment and poverty-wage jobs.

Common sense tells us to end these dirty wars and use the money to pay for a world-class, socialized, health-care system, providing free health care for all, which would create as many as 10 million new jobs with the enforcement of affirmative action.

Every single delegate to the Minnesota DFL State Convention in Duluth should have to pass through a gauntlet of warriors for peace and social justice, insisting on the change they voted for. If we can’t get peace with social justice out of the Democratic Party, we are going to have to look elsewhere —possibly start a new political party.

Alan L. Maki

Warroad, Minnesota.

The writer is a delegate to the 2010 Minnesota DFL State Convention in Duluth.

The class struggle.

An open letter to: The organizers of the “Minnesota Tea Parties.”

Thursday, April 16, 2009

An open letter to:

The organizers of the “Minnesota Tea Parties.”

What kind of ideas do you people have if you are afraid to debate and fear the ideas of others?

You are no better than, certainly no alternative to, Barack Obama and the pathetic Democrats and the even more corrupt and disgraced Republicans.

Come on, put your ideas up against a real socialist.

I challenge you to hold debates in everyone of the Minnesota communities where you had your big-business/Wall Street financed “Tea Parties.”

Just give me the dates and times and I will be there to debate any of you on the issues you claim to be so concerned about.

It is easy for you to rant and rave against the perverted caricature of socialism you have created without having to sit side by side with a socialist and debate the issues.

Here I am… let’s have at it… or are you afraid to put your ideas out where they can be challenged in the “public square.”

Alan L. Maki

Director of Organizing,

Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council

When I try to post this message on the Tea Bagger's blog I keep getting this message with my posting never posted:

Please Note: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

What I see in your Tea Party “movement” is:

1. racism2. vicious anti-communism3. warmongers4. people sucked in by Wall Street5. a gross distortion of “patriotism.”

I would encourage all of you to read “Citizen Tom Paine” by Howard Fast and his other historical novels on the American Revolution to get some kind of basic grounding and understanding as to what constitutes fighting for freedom, justice and liberty.

You really have a very shallow understanding of the issues.

For instance—

Why no mention of this “little” fact:

Our government is wasting trillions of dollars maintaining over 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil dotting the globe in countries where we have no business when, instead, we should be establishing 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States providing free health care for everyone.

It is easy for you all to say things like you do using assumed names and monikers… I am wondering if you would dare to say such pathetically stupid, harmful and hurtful things if you had to sign your real names and provide contact information?

I would challenge any of you to debate these issues: anytime, anyplace anywhere.

Barack Obama and the greedy Wall Street pigs he represents

Banner used for promoting my blog.

One have a few new banners for promoting my blog... click to enlarge; watch for my displays at gatherings, demonstrations, forums--- when you see my displays stop to chat.

The United States has 800 military bases on foreign soil...

What we need--- instead--- is 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States where people can universally access, for free, all their health care needs from pre-natal care, to general health care to eye, dental and mental care right through to burial.

Instead of moving in this progressive direction, President Barack Obama and the United States Congress are moving in a most reactionary direction towards establishing military bases in outer space as they seek to insure the profits of both the merchants of death and destruction and the profit-driven health care industries... talk about skewed priorities and your wacky ideas devoid of common sense.

In addition to these 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil, Barack Obama and the United States Congress continue funding--- with our tax-dollars--- the Israeli killing machine to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

A network of 800 public health care centers spread out across the United States would create over four-million good-paying, decent jobs--- talk about your "economic stimulus" package!

We would be planting the seeds of socialism while helping to eradicate poverty as we keep people healthy and get them well when sick.

Think about this kind of solution in relation to what Barack Obama, the U.S. Congress and the Wall Street bankers and coupon clippers are offering the American people, and the peoples of the world... just what is the reason for bailing out the banks and AIG and maintaining more than 800 expensive U.S. military bases of foreign soil?

The Mt. Carmel Clinic in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada offers us a glimpse at what militarization and wars continue to rob us of.

The problems created by Wall Street will not be solved as long as the military-financial-industrial complex is allowed to squander human and natural resources on militarism and wars... we might just as well be dumping these resources out into the ocean... at least no one would die in wars.

These merchants of death and destruction must be stopped if humanity is to survive in a livable world.

The time has come to talk about the working class Marxist politics and economics of livelihood... capitalism has failed humanity miserably and left us a real mess.

Something for working people to think about and discuss around the dinner table... the capitalist sooth-Sayers certainly are not going to broach such solutions to the problems of working people as they hide behind the skirt of Rosy Scenario as this global capitalist economic depressionintensifies.

Alan Maki

My old friend... Coleman Young

A real fighter for working people

Olive Trees Outside Bethlehem Wall

You won't see this photograph on any American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) post card. Click on picture to read the article: Obama Needs Some Internet Virtual Reality On This Trip

Commentary on American culture...

Minnesotans say: End the war in Iraq... IMPEACH Bush & Cheney

Minnesotans demand an end to the war in Iraq

This demonstration is at the offices of United States Senator Republican Norm Coleman who has been one of Bush's main boosters for the war but is apparently beginning to waffle as Election Day approaches. Several peace activists are set to challenge Coleman... including DFL'ers Jim Cohen, Al Franken & Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, and Mike Cavlan of the Green Party

A new banner to promote my blog

Banner for promoting my blog.

One have a few new banners for promoting my blog... click to enlarge; watch for my displays at gatherings, demonstrations, forums--- when you see my displays stop to chat.

Simple Crusty Bread

[This recipe, from the New York Times, really is simple and produces a crusty crust and soft interior. It uses the bare minimum of ingredients, and no kneading, and works fine with either free-standing or pan loaves. Next time I may enhance it with sun-dried tomatoes, or Kalamata olives, or onions.]

1½ tablespoons yeast

1½ tablespoons salt

6½ cups unbleached, all-purpose flour, more for dusting dough

Cornmeal.

* * * Directions * * *

1. In a large bowl or plastic container, mix yeast and salt into 3 cups lukewarm water.

Stir in flour, mixing until there are no dry patches.

Dough will be quite loose. Cover, but not with an airtight lid.

Let dough rise at room temperature 2 hours (or up to 5 hours).

2. Bake at this point; or refrigerate, covered, for as long as two weeks.

When ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour on dough and cut off a grapefruit-size piece with serrated knife.

Turn dough in hands to lightly stretch surface, creating a rounded top and a lumpy bottom.

Put dough on pizza peel sprinkled with cornmeal; let rest 40 minutes.

Repeat with remaining dough or refrigerate it.

3. Place broiler pan on bottom of oven. [Instead of this, I spritzed the oven with water several times during the baking.]

Place baking stone on middle rack and turn oven to 450 degrees; heat stone at that temperature for 20 minutes.

4. Dust dough with flour, slash top with serrated or very sharp knife three times [once worked fine].

Slide onto stone.

Pour one cup hot water into broiler pan and shut oven quickly to trap steam.

Bake until well browned, about 30 minutes.

Cool.

Yield: 4 loaves.

Variation: If not using stone, stretch rounded dough into oval and place in a greased loaf pan.

Let rest 40 minutes if fresh, an extra hour if refrigerated.

Heat oven to 450 degrees for 5 minutes.

Place pan on middle rack.

Here is a good recipe for Au Gratin Potatoes:

Nine ingredients…

A. 9 large potatoes

B. 1 16 oz container sour cream

C. 2 cans cheddar cheese soup

D. 1/2 cup melted butter

E. 2 tsp salt

F. pepper to taste

G. 1 pint half and half or regular milk or evaporated

H. onion – optional

I. 12 oz package of mild shredded cheddar cheese

Seven easy steps…

1. Cut uncooked potatoes in thin slices

2. Spray 9x13 pan with oil spray

3. Layer cut potatoes in oiled pan

4. Mix above ingredients together

5. Pour ingredients on top of potatoes

6. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour or until potatoes are soft and done

Flint Sit-down Strike Memorial

UAW first contract with General Motors

Signing for the Union was Wyndham Mortimer, head organizer and member of the Communist Party USA

Boycott Israel... stop the pogroms against the Palestinian people...

From Leonard Cohen's, "The Energy of Slaves"

Any system you contrive without us

Any system you contrive without uswill be brought downWe warned you beforeand nothing that you built has stoodHear it as you lean over your blueprintHear it as you roll up your sleeveHear it once againAny system you contrive without uswill be brought downYou have your drugsYou have your gunsYou have your Pyramids your PentagonsWith all your grass and bulletsyou cannot hunt us any moreAll that we disclose of ourselves foreveris this warningNothing that you built has stoodAny system you contrive without uswill be brought down

Coney-Roney

recipe below

Recipe for Coney-Roney:

Crock Pot Method

Put the beef and turkey meet in the crock pot and let it cook for at least 35 minutes:1 lb of Angus Ground Beef1 lb of Premium Ground Turkey

Season the meat with this:1 tablespoon of Curry1 tablespoon of Lawry's1 tablespoon of black pepper

Then add the Veggies:

1 - small or large can of corn (drained)1 - Jar of Paul Newman's Tomato Sauce1- Can of diced tomatos1 - diced Onion1 - Cut up bunch of Cilantro2 - "Hand full's of either Minute Rice or Regular Rice

After the meat has cooked for 35 minutes just throw the rest of the stuff in including the sauce and put the lid back on the crock pot. The food will be ready to eat in about an hour. Remember, the longer you let it cook at low in the crock pot, the flavor will get better.

As posted to FaceBook by Donald Allen

A program for real change...

* Peace--- end the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and shutdown the 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil.

* A National Public Health Care System - ten million new jobs.

* A National Public Child Care System - three to five million new jobs.

* WPA - three million new jobs.

* CCC - two million new jobs.

* Tax the hell out of the rich and cut the military budget by ending the wars to pay for it all which will create full employment.

* Enforce Affirmative Action; end discrimination.

* Raise the minimum wage to a real living wage

* What tax-payers subsidize in the way of businesses, tax-payers should own and reap the profits from.

* Moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions.

* Defend democracy by defending workers' rights including the right to collective bargaining for improving the lives and livelihoods of working people.

* Roll-back and freeze the price of food, electricity, gas and heating fuels; not wages, benefits or pensions.

* Wall Street is our enemy.

Let's talk about the politics and economics of livelihood for a real change.

A message from Wisconsin...

NASTURTIUM CHICKEN KEBABS

1 LB Chicken Breasts Fillets,Cubed

1/3 Cup Herb Vinegar

1/3 Cup Garlic Oil

1 Tablespoon Soy Sauce

1 Teaspoon Crushed Fresh Ginger

1 Tablespoon Sherry

24 Button Mushrooms

24 Cherry Tomatoes

1 Green Pepper,Cubed

1 Red Pepper,Cubed

12 Pickling Onions

2 Tablespoon Chopped Chives

8 Nasturtium Flowers,Chopped

Pickled Nasturtium Seeds,Chopped

1/4 Cup Plain Yogurt

Salt and Pepper to Taste

Nasturtium Leaves

Marinate the chicken in a glass dish overnight in the combined vinegar,garlic oil,soy sauce,ginger and sherry.

Drain the chicken and reserve the marinade.

Thread the chicken and vegetables alternately onto 8 skewers.

Grill or barbecue the kebabs,brushing with the reserved marinade,until cooked through.

Combine the chives,nasturtium flowers and seeds then mix the plain yogurt and salt and pepper to make a dressing.

Remove the kebabs from the skewers and serve on the nasturtium leaves.

Citizens in Minnesota are being encouraged to see scarcity as the new normal. If you are an elected official at any level of government, your job has been reduced to managing austerity.

It doesn't have to be this way -- if we address the elephant lurking in the budget deficit hall. That would be the high costs of militarization and war.

Technically, the military budget is a federal issue, distinct from state, county and city budgets. However, we can no longer maintain the fiction that distorted federal spending that prioritizes war and militarism is disconnected from state and local budget crises and is eroding living standards.

According to the nonpartisan National Priorities Project, Congress devotes 58 cents of every dollar of federal discretionary spending to war-related purposes. To better understand the impact on Minnesota of privileging military spending priorities, consider this: We have just experienced a painful government shutdown over how to deal with a two-year $5 billion shortfall. Yet Minnesota taxpayers over the same two-year period will spend $8.4 billion just for our share of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

This will bring Minnesotans' total contribution to those wars to about $36 billion. Additionally over the next two years, Minnesotans will pay $26 billion for our share of the nation's base military budget, a budget that has doubled since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Every Minnesota citizen and every layer of government is impacted negatively by current war-related priorities. Faced with pressing local needs, taxpayers in Fergus Falls will pay $17 million for their share of counterproductive Iraq/Afghan wars over the next two years; Minneapolis taxpayers will contribute $255 million.

We believe it is time for Minnesotans to communicate clearly to our members of Congress and to President Obama that federal funding priorities must shift from unnecessary wars to meeting essential needs. A new citizen-driven effort, the Minnesota Arms Spending Alternatives Project (MNasap), is a vehicle for doing so.

We have crafted a simple resolution that can be adapted and enacted by individuals, community groups, library boards, city councils and other elected bodies throughout the state. It reads in part: "Whereas our nation desperately needs to better balance its approach to security to go beyond military defense and include the economic, social, and environmental needs of our communities, state, and nation ... Therefore [we] call on Senators Klobuchar and Franken, and Representatives Walz, Kline, Paulsen, McCollum, Ellison, Bachmann, Peterson and Cravaack as well as President Barack Obama, to shift federal funding priorities from war and the interests of the few, to meeting the essential needs of us all."

The state government shutdown has ended, but the pain will be ongoing for many Minnesotans. As a recent Star Tribune editorial ("New budget rests on shaky structure," July 20) states, borrowing against future state revenues and delaying school payments will have serious consequences, and the budget "inflicts too much pain. The hurt will be felt most keenly on college campuses and among those who serve low-income disabled and elderly people."

Imagine what we can accomplish if we stop squandering wealth and talents on militarization and counterproductive wars. Schools could reduce class sizes and have adequate supplies. Bridges could be repaired. Food shelves could be adequately stocked but rarely needed. We could take steps to make homelessness rare and temporary. Cities and states could adequately provide essential services, including meeting their authentic security needs. Critical investments could be made in infrastructure and green technologies. Public libraries could expand hours and programming. Urban and national rail systems could be built. The country could address climate change and end child poverty. All Americans could have access to quality, affordable health care.

This sounds like a fantasy only because current choices keep us on the dead-end road of militarization. It is a realistic possibility once we demilitarize priorities, realistically assess security needs and refocus governing on serving the common good.

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer is associate professor of justice and peace studies at the University of St. Thomas. Bill Hilty, DFL-Finlayson, is a member of the Minnesota House. For information on the resolution campaign, contact MinnesotaASAP@gmail.com

Previously Pallmeyer and Hilty authored this resolution:

Resolution Calling for Re-ordering Priorities

Resolution Calling for Re-ordering PrioritiesResolution Calling for Re-ordering of Priorities:

Whereas past budget cuts have resulted in painful reductions in essential services and future cuts would further erode the quality of life for and, in fact, endanger the lives of many citizens; and,

Whereas many cities and communities in Minnesota are laying off police, firefighters, teachers and other essential employees; and,

Whereas past budgets have been balanced by cutting social services, under investment in essential infrastructure, and other measures that push the crisis onto local governments and the poor; and,

Whereas Minnesota taxpayers even during these times of economic crisis and fiscal austerity are poised to pay the equivalent of the entire state biennial budget, more than $35 billion over the next two years, for their share of the Defense Budget of the Federal government; and,

Whereas Minnesota taxpayers alone have already spent more than $27.5 billion, and will spend $8.4 billion more over the next two years for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and,

Whereas 58 cents of every dollar of federal discretionary spending is devoted to military purposes; and,

Whereas military spending priorities at the national level negatively impact budgets and quality of life at all levels of government and society; and,

Whereas our nation desperately needs to better balance its approach to security to go beyond military defense and include the economic, social, and environmental needs of our communities, state, and nation;

Therefore be it resolved that we, the Legislature of the State of Minnesota call on Senators Klobuchar and Franken, and Representatives Walz, Kline, Paulsen, McCollum, Ellison, Bachmann, Peterson and Cravaack as well as Congressional leadership and President Barack Obama, to shift federal funding priorities from war and the interests of the few, to meeting the essential needs of us all.

Approved [date]

Drafted by Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party State Representative Bill Hilty.

A more comprehensive alternative I put together based on talks with people across the Great Lakes Region:

A program for real change...

* Peace--- end the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and shutdown the 800 U.S. military bases on foreign soil.

* A National Public Health Care System - ten million new jobs.

* A National Public Child Care System - three to five million new jobs.

* Works Progress Administration - three million new jobs.

* Civilian Conservation Corps - two million new jobs.

* Tax the hell out of the rich and cut the military budget by ending the wars to pay for it all which will create full employment.

* Enforce Affirmative Action; end discrimination.

* Raise the minimum wage to a real living wage

* What tax-payers subsidize in the way of businesses, tax-payers should own and reap the profits from.

* Moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions.

* Defend democracy by defending workers' rights including the right to collective bargaining for improving the lives and livelihoods of working people.

* Roll-back and freeze the price of food, electricity, gas and heating fuels; not wages, benefits or pensions.

* Wall Street is our enemy.

How is Barack Obama's Wall Street war economy working for you?

Let's talk about the politics and economics of livelihood for a real change.

Obviously the resolutions by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer and Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party State Representative Bill Hilty will never be realized as government policy while we are stuck in this "two-party trap" because militarism and wars are an integral and primary component of Wall Street's imperialist agenda.

Basic Pizza Dough

Warm a medium mixing bowl by swirling some hot water in it. Drain. Place the yeast in the bowl, and pour on the warm water. Stir in the sugar, mix with a fork, and allow to stand until the yeast has dissolved and starts to foam, 5-10 minutes. Use a wooden spoon to mix in the salt and about one-third of the flour. Mix in another third of the flour, stirring with the spoon until the dough forms a mass and begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Sprinkle some of the remaining flour onto a smooth work surface. Remove the dough from the bowl and begin to knead it, working in the remaining flour a little at a time. Knead for 8-10 minutes. By the end the dough should be elastic and smooth. Form it into a ball. Lightly oil a mixing bowl. Place the dough in the bowl. Stretch a moistened and wrung-out dish towel across the top of the bowl, and leave it to stand in a warm place until the dough has doubled in volume, about 40-50 minutes or more, depending on the type of yeast you used. (If you do not have a warm enough place, turn the oven on to medium heat for 10 minutes before you knead the dough. Turn it off. Place the bowl with the dough in it in the turned off oven with the door closed and let it rise there.) To test whether the dough has risen enough, poke two fingers into the dough. If the indentions remain, the dough is ready. Punch the dough down with your fist to release the air. Knead for 1-2 minutes. Divide dough into smaller balls.

Roll to desired thickness, top with desired ingredients, and bake at 475° until crust is crispy and golden (about 10 minutes).

The trick is to ALWAYS use a pizza stone to bake on, it is not nearly as good and crispy if you don’t...